By Rick Reeno
BoxingScene.com recently spoke with Shelly Finkel, adviser to WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko. Finkel wanted to issue a response to Chris Meyer, the managing director for Sauerland Event. In an earlier report on BoxingScene, Meyer outlined the reasoning for requesting a 60-40 revenue split on a proposed fight with former champion Nikolai Valuev.
"We offered to auction certain rights to maximize revenues. Also this mechanism would resolve the problem of the two rival tv networks in Germany, ARD and RTL. The network with the best offer obtains the TV rights. We already spoke to [WBC president] Jose Sulaiman, and he agreed to conduct such a bidding process," Meyer told BoxingScene.com.
Meyer is confident about the fight's ability to create a huge event in Germany, with or without the WBC title. Finkel does not agree with Meyer's position on the money or the WBC title being at stake. He says the challenger has to fight on "champion's terms" - in the same way that David Haye had to fight on Valuev's terms by giving up options and taking the fight in Germany. If Sauerland can make more money for Valuev with another opponent, Finkel advises them to follow that road. Team Klitschko stands on their final offer of $2 million dollars.
"I just read the proposal, and meanwhile Vitali is the champion and Valuev is not, and Vitali won his last fight and Valuev didn't, and if Valuev wasn't 7'2 [in height] - nobody would even be interested. We would love to make the fight but the terms they are asking for prohibit it from happening. If they think they can make several million elsewhere, then they should go and take it," Finkel told BoxingScene.com.
"Valuev lost his last fight to Haye and I have no reason to believe the result would be different [in a rematch]. They seem to forget one thing, it has to work both ways. If you want the champion's belt and you want to become the champion, you have to fight on the champion's terms - just like Haye had to fight on Valuev's terms in order to get the fight. Haye had to give up options and everything else in order to get the fight. Sauerland has options on Haye because that's what it took to get the fight. I think we are more than fair by giving him a third of the income to fight us. If that's not fair, then we'll have to move on."
